Voices from the Gulf

I am privileged as a white woman with a PhD. My PhD wasn't easy because it was in a rigorous academic world. But it was "a man's world" that I was entering and *some* of those men certainly didn't make me feel welcome. Me and a few other women. Now that institution likely has a 50:50 ratio.

NEW YORK — The story might sound familiar. A white couple, Harry and Doris Hopper, residents in a quiet suburb of Macon, Georgia, urgently called the police one evening to report a crime. Someone had broken into her car and stolen her handgun, a .22 caliber pistol, from the glove compartment. The police, two officers, arrived and asked Doris Hopper if she could identify the thief. It was a young black man, she said.

The Historic Community of Africatown experienced several occurrences this summer that could be looked upon as a new beginning, as our community continues to do things it hope will contribute to the revitalization and growth of Africatown that will help in the revitalization, growth and tourism of the entire city of Mobile, Alabama.

It’s an incredible moment in Louisiana. Our Governor, at great political risk, has stepped forward to say that the oil industry should repair the damage it has done to our Louisiana coast. Here’s his reasoning as documented in the New Orleans Times Picayune.

I began my career in West Africa in the 1990s, where Nigerians who peacefully protested the oil industry’s destruction of their farms were raped, beaten and murdered. In the Niger Delta, violent repression was the oil industry and the Nigerian government’s response to a movement that had grown so powerful that on one day, in one protest, there were 300,000 people in the streets.

This week marks the 11th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. This disaster date - August 29th - is seared into my memory, just like April 20th, the date of the BP Disaster. For those in South Louisiana, there will be a new anniversary in August next year: the date of the floods that have so devastated our part of the world. At what point will these disaster-versaires, as I’ve learned to call them, stop?

I certainly can't speak for everyone in that role, because every experience is different and although most struggles are similar, the path is very different depending on participants, history and place ... but I will do my best.

- Being a grassroots organizer means having your heart broken and repaired a thousand times over - sometimes several times in one day.

In May, Africatown native and resident Ruth Washington, Africatown native & supporter Major Joe Womack and Africatown supporter & Mobile Environmental Justice Action Coalition President Ramsey Sprague traveled to Washington, D.C. to talk with politicians and various department members - including the Congressional Black Caucus - about Africatown's current environmental justice situation and to support the world's 2016 Break Free (from fossil fuel) theme to "Keep It In The Ground".